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Abstract
The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act (or “GRH”), which unprecedentedly provided for “sequestration”, a doomsday device to enforce fiscal discipline upon Congress and the President, was passed with bipartisan support on December 12, 1985. How did GRH take place, and why did it assume its final form? Casting GRH’s enactment in functionalist and benign terms, previous literature largely ignored the U.S. political economy since the mid-1970s, when American corporate elites, in increasingly aggressive assaults on organized labor and an activist state, successfully reordered the federal government’s fiscal priorities.
In this project I intend to challenge the existing politician/state-centered approach to the study of congressional institutions, and instead theorize mechanisms whereby societal forces and the struggles amongst them shape the rules and procedures of the congressional budget process. I hypothesize that between the mid-1970s and 1980s the congressional budget process reform was influenced by outside groups that sought to protect their economic interests.
To test this hypothesis, I draw on congressional hearings, bills, hearing testimonies and other public statements to search for evidence pointing to outside groups’ activities and articulations of their preferences for issues and proposals on the reform agenda. I found that groups actively participated in shaping the congressional budget process, and their preferences were indeed motivated by economic interests. In addition, the business community tended to dominate the discussion. The general content and the direction of enacted reform was more consistent with what business interests preferred, though not at the complete expense of low-income and working-class Americans.
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